


Thirty Words - A Backstory

by tehJai



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Exposition, Gen, Introspection, Solitude, final fantasy cast away, i'm notoriously bad with tags, so much exposition
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 08:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20618324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tehJai/pseuds/tehJai
Summary: A series of small fills based on the prompt words for #FFXIVWrite2019 on Tumblr, acting as a sort of prose-y introduction to Keltgeim Eyristyrwyn, because RP profiles are not something I'm good at.Each "chapter" will cover five of the prompt words given on Tumblr.  Check out that tag on that site for information about the exercise; orthe contest runner's rules page.Sadly, this work is considered abandoned, but I wanted to leave it up because it was a very interesting exercise.





	Thirty Words - A Backstory

Her friends, standing outside the stone circle that the Eight Winds Research and Development Conglomerate of Individuals had set up out on the Range, a flat rocky island out to sea somewhere southwest of Limsa Lominsa, kept shifting in and out of her vision, seemingly frozen in place. 

Between Keltgeim's outstretched palms, a relic from a simple mercenary job done mostly as a favour for a friend pulsed and shifted, like a tiny little pulsar radiating into the aether, glowing like a negative image of the heavens.

It had been left there by something void-flavoured that had taken her hostage and used her image to attack the group. She knew that both the sullen, sneaky miqo'te Noise and the posh elezen Charlette (who was the friend and whose inherited manor they'd been investigating) had been similarly taken… and similarly gifted. 

Keltgeim had volunteered to go first, to try and activate the things that had, until now, laid inert in all of their pockets. She and Charlette and Synnove had done hours of research on the void and aetheric artifacts and had only hypotheses to offer their colleagues, making everyone wary, and now, she'd managed to --

The roegadyn looked back at the group. They were still frozen in place but their poses had shifted slightly - there was a more pronounced shrug in Noise's shoulders, Wemrys had clearly taken a step forward, and she watched Tyr's aetherically fluffy tails sail in long, exaggerated, slow arcs while he was stuck mid-trot on the perimeter of the circle --

And then there was nothing but a flash of light and the immediate heat of the sun in a cloudless sky, the lack of clothes on her body, and the hunger. 

And the memories. She'd been putting aether into the stone and the minute she shift happened, she dropped it. The brightness of the light faded into daytime sunshine and, looking around, she saw a familiar beach, with a familiar, large pile of wreckage on the shore and scattered about on the sand. 

And the place where she'd woken up after the Calamity. The place she'd spent five long years in soul-crushing solitude, only nourished enough to survive day after day after day, one thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven times. 

And the void, the _ thing _ that had lashed out at the others, spewing her own resentments and weaponizing them, was standing ominously in the grass, inverted like the glow from the stone which was who-knew-where and _ looming _. 

(Keltgeim understood now why Charlette had jumped a full fulm in the air when she'd done it.)

"Too late," it said, its voice coming from _ everywhere _, rough and gravelly and yet a reflection of her own, "for here you are again in this empty place."

It made Keltgeim reel, just a little bit. It was angry, and it was _ starving, _ just like she had been when she was last here. Her doppelganger, that reversed, raging _ thing _ that she now realized was a part of her was woefully terrifying. 

She felt its desire reaching out and focusing on something she couldn't see. She felt that it wanted to punish, to hurt. And Keltgeim knew all at once that she was _ right _ about these stones, at least in one regard. 

After the first altercation, everyone had begun to doubt one another and to imply that some saw others as more worthy of blame and aid alike. Everyone thinking they were in the right. It was impossible to discern if the stones were the reason the Winds seemed on the brink, or if the Winds were doing it to themselves --

For a moment, Keltgeim wanted to think the latter; a part of her figured that she truly wasn't worth anyone's effort. It wasn't even the least painful of the two explanations -- was she wallowing in self-pity?

She looked around the island: the cloudless sky, the smell of salt and coral and the sound of the waves against the lagoon across the bay, constant and insistent. 

* * *

_ She woke up face-down in the damp sand, steaming as the heat from Bahamut's release and subsequent flyby settled over the beach. She was beaten, blood pouring from her face obscuring her right eye, and she couldn't breathe right away. Not even when she lifted her head from the sand; the gasp for air she wanted to take stuck in her throat for a lot longer than it ought to have. _

_ She didn't know where she was. There was only bits of the moon still visible out to sea, and the arcs of twisted aether still marking the sky. It hurt. She hurt. _

_ The breath she wanted to take, when she finally took it, was a prelude to a scream. _

* * *

_Keltgeim's predicament, from what she could gauge about it after three days, was worse than she thought. There were the three ships that comprised Sapphire Tide Shipping and the multitude of sailors and pursers and navigators (like her) who manned them. Her parents and brother among them. _

_ They had all been obliterated, by Dalamud and whatever was within it (she hoped she was wrong and it wasn't actually Bahamut), and the only things, apparently, that had survived the experience, were a couple tons of assorted food supplies, much of it too perishable for her to eat before the rot set in, another ton of lumber, odds and ends from the ships, and her. _

_ She'd spent most of the third day using a plank to dig a grave, when the first body had washed up that morning. _

* * *

_ There was a large palm tree that stood right on the rise overlooking the beach, and the trunk of it looked like it had been carved by an artisan, tally marks covering its bark in neat rows. What was left of the wreckage was arranged neatly in a pyramid and covered with a sail -- Keltgeim's own little hoard, were she to have anyone to hoard from. _

_ Two hundred and five suns. She had counted every one as she wandered around the island, building and maintaining the shelter she'd put together from the wreckage each morning, sleeping in it during the hottest bits of the day, and attempting to fish in the evening (or, as was more common than not, to become fed up with the whole fishing endeavour and husk a few coconuts). _

_ At night, she laid on the beach, listening to the surf, and memorizing the stars. _

* * *

"They need to feel what we felt," said her doppelganger. The air _ flickered _and for a moment Keltgeim saw a glimpse of her friends, still frozen in time. 

She knew what it meant; the doppelganger, this twisted inversion of her self was merely a vessel for all the things she'd never thought to discuss with her friends - she hoped they could be considered friends, or at least acquaintances because she figured they didn't care. The fear of being left, alone, after being taken by the thing. How intimately she understood that the star will spin on with or without her and how it just made her want to be _ small _sometimes, but still thought of. 

With the exception of two - one of whom had also been taken her friends, colleagues, whatever, had appeared to do just that in the fog of war. Whether or not it had been deliberate, or an influence from the void had not quite been made clear, not after Keltgeim's attempts to be forthright had blown up in her face. She still held bitterness. But she had no desire to _ hurt _ any of them. "Aye, but not like this. Leave them out of it."

The void-touched _ thing _that wore her face shook her head. "They didn't come for you. Just like nobody came for us here."

"... Incorrect."

The doppelganger raged. But Keltgeim dealt it a chastising look that brought it to a halt. The air stilled. Time stopped. 

The roegadyn's eyes went wide, and the stars seemed to fill them, darkness with a million points of light. 

"They didn't know."


End file.
